Salt Skin
by My God Can Beat Up Your God
Summary: "Ask yourself... is there something you want so badly that it's worth putting your life in danger?" AU.


I _shouldn't be here_ , Sakura thought. It was late—too late for someone so young to be wandering outside alone. She should have known better.

But Sakura was a stubborn girl. _I'm shinobi_ , she'd tell with herself, _and shinobi aren't afraid of the dark. What kind of shinobi couldn't wander the streets of their home at night?_

 _The fourteen-year-old kind,_ the other voice in her head retorted. _The kind that know that there are stronger people than you that lurk in the shadows. The kind that know not all men are good_.

 _I don't care_ , Sakura thought hotly, stamping out the calm, rational side of herself. _Naruto wouldn't be afraid of the dark. He's stronger than that. If I was more like him, I'd be able to walk out at night without being afraid. If I was stronger, Sasuke wouldn't be gone._

That was why she was out here after all, wasn't it? Today was the anniversary of that day—the day Sasuke left. Try as she might, Sakura could not sleep. The memories were too strong tonight, so she had risen from her bed and taken to wandering. No matter the progress she made, nothing seemed to assuage her guilt, her feelings of powerlessness, the memories of her inadequacies. Even her tutelage under the Tsunade-sama could not erase the past. Yes, she had made progress—she was stronger, smarter, faster and more useful than ever—but even now, Sakura doubted herself.

It was not long before she found herself at _that place_. Sakura gazed down at the bench briefly before looking up. She could picture him standing there, his back turned to her, backpack covering the familiar Uchiha crest that was seared into her memory (she saw their backs so very often). If Sasuke was here now, would she be able to stop him? Would she be fast enough to dodge his hit, would she be loud enough to scream for help? Would she have been strong enough for Sasuke to take her with him?

It didn't matter, though. Sasuke was gone. Naruto was gone, too.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, staring down at the bench—as if it were the cause of her misfortunes—but eventually she, too, turned and left. For a moment, the urge to follow Sasuke's footsteps nearly threatened to overwhelm her. In the end, she went the other direction.

* * *

Sakura didn't realize she was in danger until it was too late.

It wasn't entirely her fault—it was dark, after all, and Sakura wasn't in the habit of wandering alone at night. She expected it to be quieter than normal, so when the stillness left her unsettled, she ignored the niggling suspicion that something was not quite right.

She tried to focus on the stones in the walkway as she dragged herself home, counting them off with each passing step. As she drew closer to town, her ears strained for the familiar sounds of Konoha, listening for the far off chatter of civilians leaving work late, for the late night restaurants closing up for the evening—for the sound of crickets, and the gentle brush of the wind against the trees.

But there was nothing.

Sakura raised her head ever so slightly—just enough to see the gravestones before her.

Sakura frowned. She must have went the wrong direction. It wasn't too out of the way—Konoha's Cemetery was at the edge of town, too. Shaking her head, Sakura stopped walking and headed back in the direction she came.

Minutes passed. Sakura kept walking, but the graveyard seemed never-ending. Was the cemetery this big? Sakura had only been there a handful of times before.

More minutes passed, and Sakura realized she could not see the end of the graveyard. This couldn't be right.

Something heavy settled in her stomach. The stone of the headstones were weathered and worn, the writing etched in difficult to read. Frowning, Sakura approached the nearest headstone, her brow wrinkling as she squinted to read the epitaph in the dark:

 _HERE LIES_  
 _UCHIHA SASUKE_  
 _BELOVED BROTHER AND SON_

Sakura choked back a gasp. No! This wasn't right! Sasuke wasn't dead. This wasn't his headstone—they didn't even _have_ headstones like this in Konoha.

She tore her eyes away, dazed. Sakura took a step back, and then another, and another, until she realized that as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but headstones. No longer could she see trees on the horizon, or the faint outline of buildings in the distance: there was nothing but fog, and mist, and graves.

Faintly, Sakura recalled a distant memory of a younger Sasuke, injured, reaching out towards her, back before they were officially Team Seven. Back when Kakashi had trapped her in that terrible genjutsu.

"Kai!" Sakura shouted, barely keeping the panic from her voice. Nothing happened.

"Kai! Kai!"

This time, her desperation was not so easily contained.

Horrified, Sakura turned away from the grave, and only then did she notice that the rest of the cemetery was long gone. She glanced up. To her left, the trees in the distance had vanished. To her right, the far off buildings of Konoha were no where to be seen, and below her, the pavement beneath her feet was shrouded in fog. In fact, everywhere she looked was now covered in fog, and yet that too was warped. If she squinted her eyes, the colors within the mist almost looked like a sunset. The pigments were off, though: purple melted into green melted into gold, swirling together in a bizarre, ever changing pattern. It was far lighter than it had been before, but Sakura could not tell which direction the light came from.

The source of the light was the least of her concerns, though, for out of the fog came the angels. Their appearances were so surreal that Sakura stopped shouting Kai in favor of simply gawking at them.

Before her were three adorable baby cherubs. It wasn't what she expected to encounter in this bizarre, not-genjutsu graveyard. They were the stuff of Hallmark cards—obese little things, with thick rolls of fat and stubby wings that shouldn't be able to lift them off the ground.

One of them looked at her, giggling, with his cute little baby smile, and flew towards her. It was the oddest thing—weren't objects supposed to get larger as they got closer?

Why did these cherubs seem to be getting smaller?

The cherubs flew toward her in droves ( _weren't there only three before_?) and by the time they were arms length away, they couldn't have been larger than the size of her thumb.

Sakura had the strangest urge to swat them away—so she did. As her hand made contact, the cherubs flew from her in a gust, as if her hand had collided with paper. The angels scattered in the wind, growing larger and wider as they flew, stretching into thin sheets of paper, twisting and enlarging in the air and until they were nearly bigger than herself. No longer did the cherubs resemble babies: the angels had become disfigured caricatures of themselves, with heads that were elongated past the point of resembling something human, distorted grins, limbs far too gangly to be anything other than terrifying.

Sakura ran, screaming, only to find that the floor beneath her was no longer solid. She slid and jerked her body, trying to correct herself with her other foot, only to slide further forward. She toppled to the floor, and as she reached out an arm to brace herself, Sakura realized that the ground was covered in papers.

No, they weren't _just_ papers: Sakura recognized these from somewhere. Yes, her mother's sewing room, wasn't it? These were pieces from patterns—yes, tailor patterns, that was right! The papers were brown, so thin they were translucent, each piece oddly cut. There was a sleeve, a pant leg, the edge of a skirt... There were pattern pieces everywhere, surrounding the floor as far as her eyes could see, stacked so high and thick together that she couldn't decipher where solid ground began.

Moving was hard, but at least she wasn't slipping anymore. She tried to get away, but the patterns kept flying into the air as she ran, sticking to her limbs. Flustered, Sakura punched the floor—she wasn't quite strong enough to fully mimic Tsunade's moves, but the impact was strong enough to blow the papers away.

The papers flew into the air and cleared the path as anticipated, but instead of fluttering back to earth, the patterns remained suspended in midair. The effect was uncanny.

Ignoring the papers, Sakura kept moving. The fog grew thicker and thicker, and Sakura couldn't help but feel as if she was getting no where. Eventually, she found her path blocked by bright yellow tape. Past the tape was the outline of a body.

 _What the hell_? Sakura thought _. Is this some kind of crime scene?_

As Sakura drew closer, she realized she was wrong. Upon first glance, the bright yellow bands sealing the area appeared to be crime scene tape, but on closer inspection, there were no words etched into the sides. No, the only markings she could see were evenly spaced lines, and numbers: 1, 2, 3...

Measuring tape? Yes, that was it! And surrounding the outline of the body—those weren't orange cones, but instead what appeared to be giant silver thimbles.

Hesitantly, Sakura climbed over the measuring tape, and kneeled down towards the body.

It was just a girl.

She didn't look dead. In fact, nothing appeared to be wrong with her at all. She looked like she was sleeping.

But she wasn't sleeping. No breath hit Sakura's hand as she checked her mouth, and as she touched the girl's neck, nothing but stillness greeted her. The girl couldn't have been much younger than Sakura—thirteen, maybe—but lying dead on the floor, above a bed of buttons and threads, she looked much younger.

Wait—buttons?

Before Sakura had time to think about what this meant, (after all, there had been no buttons before, and where had the mockery of a crime scene gone?), buttons burst from the floor, engulfing the girl's body. Sakura barely managed to step back before she too was enveloped in the wave. Millions of buttons—blue, green, gold, lavender, every color she could imagine and more buttons than Sakura could ever hope to count—cascaded upwards, into a great surge of color.

And out of the wave came a creature unlike anything Sakura had ever seen. Before her stood an assortment of shapes. At first glance, they appeared to be mismatched pieces of tailor patterns. These, too, melded together, until something vaguely human stood before her, although the creature was far too large to ever be confused with one. If anything, it appeared almost doll-like: it had buttons where its eyes should be, dark and glinting, and its mouth was threaded shut with thick black strings. It had limbs, too—although they were misshapen and did not appear to be anything resembling ordinary arms or legs. The rest of the creature's body defied description: a flood of colorful strings poured from tears in the limbs, wrapped tightly around the enormous spindle that appeared to be the creature's torso.

Behind her, someone giggled. Sakura jerked her head towards the sound: the cherubs were back. The scenery shifted as she looked towards them. The fog was gone, and in its place was rolls and rolls of fabric—silk, cotton, denim and knit, stripped, patches and patterns of all kinds—how could this be? Sakura glanced up and saw that the sky, too, was covered in fabric.

Something else was new, too. Oversized sewing needles, some the length of Sakura's entire body, now accompanied the cherubs. They flew towards the creature, suspended in the air. Sakura had only tried sewing a handful of times: it only took a few needle pricks for her to declare sewing to be too domestic for a ninja academy student. Those needles were sharp—and they weren't nearly the size of these.

The needles twisted in the air, and Sakura felt a terrible sense of foreboding when the needles surrounded her, tips pointed in her direction. The stillness of the needles contrasted sharply with the chaotic movement of the rest of the environment: the flowing threads from the creature, the constant movement of fabric, the cherubs fluttering in circles around her. Sakura knew, somehow, that any moment they were going to pounce.

"Sakura!"

The needles rushed towards her.

Sakura jumped back, twisting in the air—needles grazed through flesh, but missed piercing her skin. Still, her skin burned, and the needles embedded in the fabric floor beneath her feet wouldn't remain there for long.

"Sakura, quickly! This way!"

Who was that, calling for her? The voice sounded odd—the tone was without inflection, and seemed almost genderless.

Turning and running blindly towards the voice, Sakura realized it wasn't a person who was saying her name. As she drew closer, she thought it might be a white cat, but upon further inspection, that wasn't right either. Cats didn't have long, tail-like tassels coming out of their ears, and they certainly didn't have piercing red eyes.

The cat-like creature darted away as she approached, and Sakura had no choice but to follow it. The path they followed spiraled downwards, through twists and turns of fabric. The walls were plastered with images of what looked like a bizarre collage of magazine cutouts. Two-dimensional, warped dolls littered the path, disappearing as they turned, only to reappear larger than they were before. On and on they ran, the maze seemingly endless.

Eventually, the creature stopped moving and turned to face her.

"Sorry we had to meet like this, Sakura Haruno," it said. "My name is Kyubey."

Sakura stared. "What—who are you? How do you know my name?"

The creature cocked its head, but said nothing.

"Where are we?"

"This place you wandered into is called a witch's labyrinth. I'm sorry about this," The creature's voice never changed tone as it spoke, "Most humans that wander here don't make it out alive, you know. Even shinobi."

"A witch's labyrinth?" Sakura repeated. "What do you mean? What—what _was_ that thing?"

"I'm sorry, but we don't really have time right now," Kyubey said. "We must act quickly."

"What are you talking about?"

"I have a favor to ask..."

* * *

 _..._

 _Just make a contract with me... and become a magical girl._

 _..._

* * *

 _..._

 _In return, I can grant one wish. Any wish at all._

 _..._

"Anything at all?"

...

 _Yes. I can grant the most impossible of miracles._

...

"I don't understand. What's the catch?"

...

 _There's no catch. All you have to do is sign the contract. In exchange, you must accept a destiny of fighting witches. Only those with a soul gem can navigate these labyrinths and battle witches. In return for your wish, you must accept this destiny_ — _and the risks that come along with it._

 _..._

 _I can give you the power to fight witches. With a soul gem, you'll become far stronger than you are now_ _—_ _you won't be a regular human anymore. You'll be more than that_ — _you will be a magical girl._

...

"I'll be... stronger?"

 _..._

 _Ask yourself... is there something you want so badly that it's worth putting your life in danger?_

...

* * *

She closed her eyes. When she did, she saw Team Seven together: Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi-sensei. They were safe. They were happy. They were home.

Sakura didn't have to think twice.

* * *

 **A/N:** Puella Magi Madoka Magica inspired, in case there was any confusion. I think that this can be understood without having seen the anime, though. No parody or humor, for once. I'm not sure if there'd be an audience for something like this, but it was fun to write. Although... would Sakura travel down the path of Homura or Sayaka? Hmmmm.


End file.
